One Hundred Percent
by illrain666
Summary: Adaptation of Haruki Murakami's On Seeing the One Hundred Percent Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning. Kyro


Note: Adapted from Haruki Murakami's "On Seeing the One Hundred Percent Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning". You can read the original story at http://www.mat.upm.es/jcm/murakami-perfect.html and please do read it because it's simply beautiful. I can only hope that I've been able to capture even the tiniest fraction of its _wonderfulness_ in this fic. I also used Westley's "life's little quirks" line from "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman.

000

One Hundred Percent

Magneto's orders were simple. Send everyone the message that the Brotherhood will not tolerate the existence of the cure. So he figured that a little firebombing of a random cure clinic would do the trick very well. Then he had to run into Bobby the abominable iceman and have a minor girly spat with his erstwhile schoolmate about said schoolmate's freak of a girlfriend, erroneous life choices and other shit, and it was all he could do not to torch the sanctimonious ass along with the clinic. But that encounter wasn't what really pissed him off, no.

It was the fact that as he was making his getaway from the scene of his latest arson, _it_ happened. He was walking with his head down, the hood of his jacket obscuring a good part of his face without impairing his vision, when the absolute worst thing that could happen happened as he walked past a girl who was going in the opposite direction.

He _knew_. She was the one hundred percent perfect girl for him.

Other people had their soulmates, true loves, destinies, but Pyro had his one hundred percent ideal of perfection.

It was weird. She didn't look like he expected. A bit on the short, skinny side and cute enough, yeah, but nothing heartstopping. She had an anxious expression on her face as she fought through the panicking crowd, her eyes obviously searching for someone. Her boyfriend, maybe? He wanted to stop and shout, "Hey, it's me! I'm the one!" But she would just probably think that he was crazy. In fact, he couldn't think of anything that he could possibly say to her that wouldn't make her run for her life.

"Hi, I'm Pyro. I'm a wanted terrorist. Do you maybe want to have a cup of coffee with me or something?"

"Hi, I'm Pyro. I like music, poetry, and setting things on fire."

Or he could try the truth for once in his life. "Hi, I'm Pyro, and you're the one hundred percent perfect girl for me." Yeah, that would really win her over. If she had a thing for random weirdos accosting her on the street.

So, he kept walking. Four more steps and he turned the corner and she was gone.

Later, of course, he figured out what he should have said to her. It was a bit of a mouthful, starting with "Once upon a time" and ending with "It's a sad story, don't you think?" It was just too bad, though, that she would never get to hear it.

Once upon a time, there was a boy and a girl. They met in school, when he was sixteen and she was twelve. The difference in their ages should have prevented them from ever crossing each other's paths due to the rigid social structure separating the _babies_ from the teenagers, but the girl was apparently some kind of a genius and she shared some classes with the boy. At first, the boy teased the girl endlessly, making rude comments about hobbits in her hearing and trying to set her hair on fire. The girl retaliated by teaching him all the wrong answers for their chemistry exam when their teacher asked her to help him study. Somehow, they ended up bonding during detention and becoming, if not friends, then very close acquaintances. Who spent a lot of time hanging out together though the boy always told everyone that she was merely helping him with his homework because there was no way that he was admitting that his best friend was a kid.

But then something changed. The girl was hurt when the boy suddenly started to ignore her and chose instead to form some sort of twisted love triangle with his roommate and the new girl in school. The boy, for his part, never thought to explain to her that the real reason why he abruptly put an end to their friendship was the fact that he was starting to have some uncomfortably inappropriate feelings for her. He was beginning to think that he might be a pervert, dreaming about her. So, he decided to transfer his attentions to someone of a more suitable age, though the whole thing exploded in his face when the new girl made it very clear that she preferred his roommate over him. Her rejection had stung, of course. But, curiously, it hadn't stung that badly. Maybe at the back of his mind he knew that she was only a seventy-five percent at most.

Then fate completely fucked him over. He threw his life away to follow his own personal messiah and he forgot all about percentages and perfection. Until he let it slip from his grasp when he chose to continue walking instead of stopping and introducing himself to the one he had been waiting for his whole life.

But that wasn't the end of things, though. Because he was actually given another chance, though God knew he didn't deserve one, and he saw her again: the girl he passed by on the street, his one hundred percent perfect girl.

And as he watched her take her place among his enemies, he found himself almost wanting to laugh out loud, surprised at life's little quirks. But he had a battle to fight now and he couldn't afford to be distracted by thoughts of all that could never be, though he hoped that she would be okay and that she'd be able to get out of Alcatraz alive.

It's a fucking sad story, don't you think?

The end


End file.
